US vote be­tween ‘bad and worse’: Rouhani

TEHRAN: Ira­nian Pres­i­dent Has­san Rouhani said yes­ter­day that he had no pref­er­ence in the US elec­tion race be­tween Hil­lary Clin­ton or Don­ald Trump, say­ing it was a choice be­tween “bad and worse”. “At the UN, the leader of a coun­try asked me which of the can­di­dates I pre­ferred. I re­sponded: ‘Do I pre­fer the bad over the worse, or the worse over the bad?” Rouhani said at a speech in Arak in cen­tral Iran. The mod­er­ate pres­i­dent said he was struck by the way in which the Amer­i­can can­di­dates “ac­cuse and in­sult each other”. “Do we want this kind of democ­racy in our coun­try? This kind of elec­tion?” he asked. He said “moral­ity does not ex­ist” in the United States “which pre­tends to have had democ­racy for 200 years”. Rouhani him­self faces re-elec­tion in May 2017 and is set for a tough bat­tle against con­ser­va­tives who dis­like his over­tures to the West.